Magazine FortuneMagazine has a very interesting article about a way in which Apple shares are manipulated on the American stock market. They claim that in the last 2 months, every Friday, the shares of the Apple company register a large increase or decrease even before the stock market closes. They claim that behind these movements there are various people who do not have very "good" interests vis-à-vis the company. Those from Fortune explain a recent event in which Apple shares were sold in packs of 100 at $350 each, would have fallen below this value before the stock market closed following a very large transaction.
It was 3:48 pm on Friday April 29 and traders who had purchased Apple (AAPL) April 29 $350 "calls" — options that gave them the right to buy Apple shares in blocks of 100 for $350 per share — were sitting pretty. The stock was trading around $353.50 and those calls were worth more $350 apiece (the difference between the price of the stock and the so-called "strike price" of the option times 100).
Then, in an extraordinary burst of trading — exacerbated by the rebalancing of the NASDAQ-100 scheduled for the following Monday — more than 15 million shares changed hands and the stock dropped below the $350 strike price just before the closing bell. Result: The value of those calls disappeared like a puff of smoke.
Those from Fortune explain a theory that puts the American stock market in a rather bad light, but also the Apple company, in the end. This problem is not only illegal in the USA, but it creates a state of insecurity for investors, and this could greatly affect the stock price on the stock market.
